What You Saw on the Other Side
by Emerald Embers
Summary: Chris couldn't make Josh talk about what he saw, but he could support him until he was ready to. Chris/Josh


For as long as Chris had known Josh, he'd wished he knew what was going on in Josh's head. Josh had always stood out from Chris' other friends by way of eccentricity, with his weird sense of humour and his shamelessly open love for his sisters, and he was almost inhumanly generous with his time, his money, and his friendship.

When Chris first learned Josh was sick, he'd wanted to know what was going on in his head all the more. Chris had hit up Google for advice, and it was helpful enough with the depressive episodes; it taught him signs to look out for and encouraged him to make sure Josh was getting out of the house once in a while, to make sure Josh had distractions from whatever was getting him down, and to make sure he knew there was someone willing to listen to him any time of day or night.

He didn't know what to do for the hallucinations.

So much of the advice he'd read involved getting the other person to talk about what they saw, and Josh wouldn't. The only warning Chris ever got was Josh freezing in place all of a sudden, sometimes grabbing Chris' arm if he was close enough, and colour draining from his face as his eyes tracked something that wasn't there.

It had been bad enough before Josh's sisters went missing, before everything that went wrong on the mountain. Now whatever Josh saw had him flinching, muttering or whispering under his breath, and sometimes he would start hyperventilating and there was nothing Chris could do to comfort him.

"I'm real," Chris would tell him, "Whatever else you're seeing, I'm real."

All he could do was draw Josh closer as carefully as he could, making sure not to startle him or leave him feeling trapped, and shield him from everyone else's sight while he waited the hallucinations out.

Whatever Josh saw, it would leave him too sick to eat and too tired to do much more than head home and go to sleep. Sometimes he didn't even make it to bed, curling up on the sofa or the carpet. Chris had started leaving a blanket folded up under the sofa so that he didn't have to go searching for one each time.

It was easier once Josh could bear to sleep in the same house as Chris, as they could just head to whichever of their homes was closest, and because it meant Chris could sleep a little easier knowing that he was there if Josh needed him.

There were good days and bad days, and at least he still had Ashley to talk to on the latter, Sam too if she was on Skype.

.

Chris knew that pressuring Josh to talk was never going to get him anywhere. Josh was fiercely private and the only reason Chris had even known Josh about the medication and therapy was because Josh's mom had little respect for that privacy. Chris had called her up years back to ask why Josh hadn't been to school in a week and in one phone call found out what medication Josh was on, how long he'd neglected to take it, and the name of the practice he had been taken to for treatment.

He'd felt dirty for knowing it without Josh's permission, and had tried to get Josh to talk about it of his own accord so he wouldn't have to feel guilty about it.

Chris tried getting details out of Josh when he was sober, when he was drunk, when he was chilled out after an afternoon gaming or sleepy and only half-watching shitty cartoons at night, and nothing worked. Josh didn't keep a journal that Chris knew about, and even if he had, trying to get caught snooping in it would have been even worse than straight-up admitting he'd learned the truth from Josh's mom.

After the mountain, he had an excuse for knowing about Josh's treatment. He just wished he'd told Josh earlier - wished that talking about it might have kept Josh from breaking down to that degree, that he could have given Josh more help when he stopped looking for his sisters and started mourning them instead.

And it wasn't as if Josh was faultless either. Chris had been there to talk to, Sam had been there to talk to, nobody had abandoned him.

They weren't starting with a blank slate now that Josh was on-off living with him, but what they had been given a chance to be open and honest with each other, and to try to build up the trust between them again.

Chris was willing to wait until Josh could talk, even if waiting got tiring too.

.

They had spent an evening catching up on old TV recordings, clearing out space for more, when Chris felt the atmosphere change. He'd been happy enough lazing on the sofa when he felt his skin prickle and his stomach tighten up out of nowhere, and he looked over to where Josh was lazing on the other sofa, found him staring.

"Hannah knows I'm not a good guy," Josh said, small and quiet. "That's why she took me."

"Don't say that," Chris said, leaning up and straightening his glasses. "You're awesome."

"I'm not. I'm really fucking not," Josh said, voice cracking before he started hitting himself, and before Chris knew it he was kneeling in front of the other sofa, grabbing Josh's hands at the wrists. He hadn't known he could move that fast. "I'm - I - I'm a psychopath, Chris, who does that to their friends? Who does that?"

"You fucked up, I know, but you - you were sick, man, you were sick, and that mountain's literally fucking cursed - like, for real cursed - and you're not, you're not evil, dude. I'd know if you were evil," Chris rambled, unsure if he'd got all the words out in the right order and not caring, because Josh was shaking and miserable and he needed to fix it.

"She - she follows me all the time, Chris, all the fucking time, and she's got Beth's hair stuck in her teeth and I didn't know she was in the mines, I left her there, and I miss her so much. I miss her so much," Josh said, breaking down sobbing, and Chris pulled him off the sofa into his arms, wrapped him up in a tight hug.

"It's not your fault," Chris said, stroking up and down Josh's back with one hand. "No one knew what was down there. Maybe the police did a shitty search but it's not your fault. You're not the bad guy."

"I am," Josh said, and Chris shook his head; an answer came to mind, and after debating for a moment if it was tasteless, he figured it was worth saying anyway, because anything was better than leaving Josh tied up in knots like this.

"You're not. Know how I know? I've played too many videogames." Chris thought about the moment when he'd been in the shed with Mike, Josh insistent that he hadn't hurt Jess and Mike insistent that he had. Even when all the evidence had pointed at Josh, Chris couldn't believe Josh would have killed her, even hit a gun out of Mike's hands to keep Josh safe just in case.

He'd been right. Josh had hurt people, he'd pulled a really, really fucked-up stunt, but he hadn't killed anyone. And Christ, if he hadn't believed that - if he'd hit Josh with the bat, or let Mike shoot him -

"I'd know," Chris repeated, resting his head on Josh's shoulder. "I'd always know, dude."

They stayed like that a while, eyes closed, just listening to each other's breaths and the background noise of the TV before Chris felt Josh's fingers on the back of his neck and leaned back into the touch.

"I think I love you," Josh said, and Chris wondered why it felt different this time to all the times he'd heard it before. "No homo."

"I'd say that's at least a bit homo," Chris replied, opening his eyes and wondering if he'd ever get used to how gorgeous Josh's own were, bags and all.

"Maybe a little bit," Josh said, freeing a hand so he could wipe the tears and snot off his face, and Chris kissed him on an almost-dry patch of his cheek. "Just a little."

"Same here." Chris tapped a finger on the skin he'd just kissed. "Y'know, your eyes are always extra green when you've been crying."

"Oh my god," Josh laughed, shoving Chris away from him. "You fucking nerd."

"The fucking nerd who you love," Chris sing-songed with a grin, before climbing up onto the sofa and shamelessly snuggling up to Josh once he joined him.

Whatever was on TV didn't really matter after that. It just mattered that they were watching it together.

.

It was the first time Josh had opened up about what he saw, and it wouldn't be the last. Sometimes it would be weeks and weeks before he said anything; other times he would tell Chris what he was seeing as he was seeing it.

But it was a start, and any step in the right direction was a good step.


End file.
